Information technology (IT) administrators need to monitor the deployment of software, including programs and patches, with respect to the deployment's state and progress. This includes checking whether a given deployment is on track or out of control, and/or is proceeding efficiently or not. In general, this is accomplished by the administrator analyzing the status messages reported by client machines, and is based upon the administrator's experience.
In a large enterprise, typically there are many computing machines, of various types, including desktops, laptops and mobile devices. Each of these machines typically reports to a central configuration server (e.g., a System Center Configuration Manager, or SCCM server) or the like through log streams (e.g. status messages or status events). As a result, in order to determine the progress of deployment and/or the significant events that occurred or are occurring with respect to that deployment, the administrator needs to manually analyze a substantial amount of raw data.